In her most recent series of works, Humours, Anne Austin Pearce seeks to illustrate the invisible parts of our anatomy – including sense of humor, empathy, and fear. Earlier drawings in the series explored what these intangibles might look like upon leaving the body. In her current drawings, Pearce is visually articulating specific moments of emotional healing. Pearce works with a variety of unexpected mediums, including watercolor, colored pencil, and glitter gel pen.

Sam Witt seeks to answer questions surrounding Pearce’s ambiguous figures in his recent catalogue essay, Terribilita: Body Slaves, “Let’s say that Pearce reveals the human figure to be both beautiful and hideously deformed at once; only she can get that balance, that paradox, exactly right, without making a mockery of it. As a consequence of that, her origin bends into something we hadn’t seen before, a newly discovered human body. A creation.” Witt goes on to invite the viewer to enter Pearce’s imagined world and we extend the invitation to you to ”recognize yourself and your world in the images… Look, step through; let yourself be changed, if only in a moment of naked recognition.”

Anne Austin Pearce was born in Lawrence, Kansas and studied at the Kansas City Art Institute and Brighton Polytechnic. In 1993 Anne received a full scholarship to James Madison University, where she received her MFA with an emphasis in drawing and painting in 1996. Currently she is a Professor at Rockhurst University and Director of Greenlease Gallery. Recent exhibitions of her work include; 2009- Drawing a Line, Cara and Cabezas Contemporary, KC, MO; 2008- Humours,Unit 5 Gallery, Kansas City, MO; Drawbridge, WORK, New York, NY; KC in LA, Milo Gallery, Los Angeles, CA; Viewing Program, The Drawing Center, New York, NY; Locate Navigate, La Esquina, Kansas City, MO; 2007- Rhetorical Black Holes, Frankfurt, Germany, Genetic Confetti, Emory, Virginia.